Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life

Zack wanted to speak on a particular subject to his lofty neighbour, but somehow it stuck in his throat. His usual audacity was at fault. Mr. Wynn had never seemed so inaccessible, though in reality he was making an effort to be unusually bland to a person he disliked. For the first time in his existence, cringing Zack feared the face of mortal man.

'Spell o' warm weather, squire, ain't it, rayther? I wor jest a sayin' to Silas Duff here that I never want to see no better day for loggin', I don't.'

'It is indeed beautifully fine,' answered Mr. Wynn, who was generally called in the neighbourhood 'the squire,' a sort of compliment to his patriarchal and magisterial position. 'I hope our friend Davidson will have his work cleared off satisfactorily before dark.'

'Oh, no fear, squire, no fear, I guess. There's good teams a-field. Them cattle druv by my lad Nim are the finest in the township, I reckon.'

'Indeed!' quoth Mr. Wynn, who just knew an ox from an ass.

''Tain't a losin' game to keep a store in the bush, ef you be a smart man,' observed Zack, with a leer, after a few minutes' devotion to the contents of his tin plate. By this adjective 'smart' is to be understood 'sharp, overreaching'—in fact, a cleverness verging upon safe dishonesty. 'I guess it's the high road to bein' worth some punkins, ef a feller has sense to invest his money well.'

'I daresay,' rejoined Mr. Wynn vaguely, looking down on the mean crooked face.

'Fact, squire, downright fact. Now, I don't mind tellin' you, squire,' lowering his voice to a whisper, 'that I've cleared a hundred per cent. on some sales in my time; an' the money hain't been idle since, you may b'lieve. Thar! that's sharp tradin', I guess?'

'Yes, sir, very sharp indeed.' Mr. Wynn's face by no means reflected the Yankee's smile. But Zack saw in his gravity only a closer attention to the important subject of gain.

'I've shares in a big bank in New York, that returns me fifteen per cent.—every copper of it: an' I've two of the best farms in the township—that's countin' Daisy Burn, whar I'll foreclose some day soon, I guess.'

'You are a prosperous man, as you calculate prosperity, Mr. Bunting.'

'I guess I ain't nothin' else' answered the storekeeper, with satisfaction. 'But I kin tell you, squire, that my lad Nim is 'tarnal 'cute too, an' he'll be worth lookin' arter as a husband, he will.'

Still with an unsuspicious effort at cordiality, Mr. Wynn answered, 'I suppose so.'

'He might get gals in plenty, but he has a genteel taste, has Nim: the gal to please Nim must be thorough genteel. Now, what would you say, squire'—an unaccountable faint-heartedness seized Uncle Zack at this juncture, and he coughed a hesitation.

'Well, sir!' For the old gentleman began to suspect towards what he was drifting, but rejected the suspicion as too wild and improbable.

'Wal, the fact is, squire, Nim will have the two farms, an' the store, an' the bank shares—of course not all that till I die, but Daisy Burn at once: an'—an'—he's in a 'tarnal everlastin' state about your daughter Linda, the purtiest gal in the township, I guess.'

Mr. Wynn rose from his seat, his usually pale countenance deeply flushed. What! his moss-rose Linda—as often in a fond moment he named her—his pretty Linda, thought of in connection with this vulgar, cheating storekeeper's vulgar son? 'Sir, how dare you?' were all the words his lips framed, when Robert, beholding the scene from the other end of the board, came to the rescue.

'The fellow has been drinking,' was the most charitable construction Mr. Wynn could put upon Zack's astounding proposition. His dignity was cruelly outraged. 'Baiting the trap with his hateful knavish gains!' cried Linda's father. 'This is the result of the democracy of bush-life; the indiscriminate association with all classes of people that's forced on one. Any low fellow that pleases may ask your daughter in marriage!'

Robert walked up and down with him outside the building. Though sufficiently indignant himself, he tried to calm his father. 'Don't make the affair more public by immediate withdrawal,' he advised. 'Stay an hour or so longer at the bee, for appearance' sake. It's hardly likely the fellow will attempt to address you again, at least on that subject.' So the old gentleman very impatiently watched the log heaps piling, and the teams straining, and the 'grog-bos' going his rounds, for a while longer.

We left Andy Callaghan over his victim, with a flourishing shillelagh. Having spun him round, he stirred him up again with a few sharp taps; and it must be confessed that Nim showed very little fight for a man of his magnitude, but sneaked over the fence after a minute's bravado.

'Och, but it's myself that 'ud like to be batin' ye!' groaned Andy for the second time, most sincerely. 'Only I'm afeard if I began I wouldn't know how to lave off, 'twould be so pleasant, ye owdacious villain. Ha! ye'd throw the stick at me, would ye?' and Mr. Callaghan was across the fence in a twinkling. Whereupon Nim fairly turned tail, and fled ignominiously, after having ineffectually discharged a piece of timber, javelin-wise, at his enemy.

A loud peal of laughter, in a very masculine key, broke upon Andy's ear. It proceeded from the usually undemonstrative maiden Liberia, who was bringing a pail of water from the creek when her path was crossed by the flying pair. From that hour the tides of her feminine heart set in favour of the conqueror.

'Troth, an' I may as well let ye have the benefit of yer heels, ye mortal spalpeen,' said Andy, reining himself in. 'An' it's the father of a good thrashin' I could give ye for yer impidence. To think o' Miss Linda, that's one of the ould auncient Wynns of Dunore since Adam was a boy! I donno why I didn't pound him into smithereens when I had him so 'andy on the flat of his back—only for Miss Linda, the darlin' crathur, telling me not. Sure there isn't a peeler in the whole counthry, nor a jail neither, for a thousand mile. Now I wondher, av it was a thing I did bate him black an' blue, whose business would it be to 'rest me; an' is it before the masther I'd be brought to coort?'

Cogitating thus, and chewing the cud on the end of his sapling, Andy returned homewards leisurely. His young mistress was nowhere to be seen; so he picked up the hoe and finished her strawberry bed; and when he saw the elder Mr. Wynn approaching, he quietly walked off to Davidson's and took his place among the hive again, as if nothing had happened. Nor did the faithful fellow ever allude to the episode—with a rare delicacy judging that the young lady would prefer silence—except once that Robert asked him what had brought him to Cedar Creek so opportunely.

'Why, thin, didn't I know what the vagabone wanted, lavin' the bee 'athout his dinner, an' goin' down this road, afther me lookin' at him this twel'month dressing himself out in all the colours of neckties that ever was in the rainbow, an' saunterin' about the place every Sunday in particler, an' starin' at her purty face as impident as if he was her aqual. Often I'd ha' given me best shute of clothes to pluck the two tails off his coat; an' he struttin' up to Daisy Burn, when she and Miss Armytage tached the little childher there; an' Miss Linda thinkin' no more of him than if a snake was watchin' her out ov the bushes. But, moreover, I heerd him an' his old schemer of a father whispering at the bee: "Do you go down to herself," said Zack, "an' I'll spake to the squire." "Sure, my lad," thinks I, "if you do you'll have company along wid you;" so I dogged him every step of the way.'

Which explains Andy's interposition.

Robert Wynn, when his wrath at the Buntings' presumption subsided, had gloomy anticipations that this would prove the beginning of an irreconcilable feud, making the neighbourhood very disagreeable. But not so. A week afterwards, while he stood watching the workmen building the dam for the projected mill, he heard the well-known drawl at his elbow, and turning, beheld the unabashed Zack. He had duly weighed matters for and against, and found that the squire was too powerful for a pleasant quarrel, and too big to injure with impunity.

'Wal, Robert, so yer raisin' a sawmill!' he had uttered in a tone of no agreeable surprise. Mr. Wynn pointed to Davidson, and left him to settle that point of rivalry.

'We wull divide the custom o' the country, neebor Zack,' quoth the other.

'I don't deny that you have an elegant mill-privilege here; but I guess that's all you'll have. Whar's grist to come from, or lumber? D'ye think they'll pass the four roads at the "Corner," whar my mill stands handy?'

'Room eneugh i' the warld for baith o' us,' nodded Davidson; 'a' room eneugh in Canada for a million ither mills, freend.' And he walked down the sloping bank to assist at the dam.

This last—a blow at the pocket—seemed to affect Zack far more than that other blow at the intangible essence, his family honour. He could see his son Nim set off for the back settlements of Iowa without a pang; for it is in vulgar Yankee nature to fling abroad the sons and daughters of a house far and wide into the waters of the world, to make their own way, to sink or swim as happens. But the new sawmill came between him and his rest. Before winter the machinery had been noisily at work for many a day; with huge beams walking up to the saw, and getting perpetually sliced into clean fresh boards; with an intermittent shooting of slabs and sawdust into the creek. 'Most eloquent music' did it discourse to Robert's ears, whose dream of a settlement was thus fulfilling, in that the essential requisite, lumber for dwelling-houses, was being prepared.

CHAPTER XLII

UNDER THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

For some sufficient reason, the Yankee storekeeper did not at that time prosecute his avowed intention of foreclosing the mortgage on Daisy Burn. Perhaps there was something to be gained by dallying with the captain still—some further value to be sucked out of him in that villainous trap, the tavern bar, whither many a disappointed settler has resorted to drown his cares, and found the intoxicating glass indeed full of 'blue ruin.'

One brilliant day in midwinter, when the sky was like a crystallized sapphire dome, and the earth spotless in snow, a single sleigh came bowling along the smooth road towards the 'Corner.' 'A heavy fall of snow is equivalent to the simultaneous construction of macadamized roads all through Canada,' saith that universally quoted personage, Good Authority. So it is found by thousands of sleighs, then liberated after a rusty summer rest. Then is the season for good fellowship and friendly intercourse: leisure has usurped the place of business, and the sternest utilitarian finds time for relaxation.

The idlers in Bunting's bar heard the sleigh-bells long before they left the arches of the forest; and as the smallest atom of gravel strikes commotion into a still pool, so the lightest event was of consequence in this small stagnant community of the 'Corner.' The idlers speculated concerning those bells, and a dozen pair of eyes witnessed the emergence of the vehicle into the little stumpy street.

Zack's sharp vision knew it for one that had been here last year, as he peered through the store-window, stuffed with goods of all sorts; but the occupant was not the same. Grizzled hair and beard escaped the bounds of the fur cap tied down over his ears, and the face was much older and harder. The mills seemed to attract his attention, frozen up tightly as they were; he slackened his sleigh to a pause, threw his reins on the horse's neck, and walked to the edge of the dam. After a few minutes, Bunting's curiosity stimulated him to follow, and see what attracted the stranger's regard.

'Are you the proprietor of this mill, sir?' called out the tall grey-haired gentleman, in no mild tone. Zack hesitated, weighing the relative advantages of truth and falsehood. 'Wal, I guess'—

'You need guess nothing, sir; but the construction of your dam is a disgrace to civilisation—a murderous construction, sir. Do you see that it is at least twelve feet, perpendicular, sir? and how do you ever expect that salmon can climb over that barrier? I suppose a specimen of the true "salmo salar" has never been caught in these waters since you blocked up the passage with your villainous dam, sir?'

'I warn't ever a-thinkin' o' the salmon at all, I guess,' answered the millowner truly and humbly, because he conceived himself in the authoritative presence of some bigwig, senator, or M.P., capable of calling him, Zack Bunting, to a disagreeable account, perchance.

'But you should have thought,' rejoined the stranger irately. 'Through such wrong-headedness as yours Canada is losing yearly one of her richest possessions in the way of food. What has exterminated the salmon in nearly all rivers west of Quebec? dams like this, which a fish could no more ascend than he could walk on dry land. But I hope to see parliamentary enactments which shall render this a felony, sir,—a felony, if I can. It is robbery and murder both together, sir.'

Mr. Hiram Holt walked rapidly to his sleigh, wrapped himself again in the copious furs, and left the storekeeper staring after the swift gliding cutter, and wondering more than ever who he was.

This matter of the dams had so much occupied his attention of late, that even after he reached Cedar Creek he reverted to it once and anon; for this fine old Canadian had iron opinions welded into his iron character. The capacity of entertaining a conviction, yet being lukewarm about it, was not possible to Hiram Holt. He believed, and practised suitably, with thorough intensity, in everything; even in such a remote subject as the Canadian fisheries.

The squire, who knew what preservation of salmon meant in the rivers of Britain, and who in his time had been a skilful angler, could sympathize with him about the reckless system of extinction going on through the Province, and which, if it be not arrested by the hand of legislative interference, will probably empty the Canadian streams of this most delicious and nutritive of fish.

'A gold-field discovered in Labrador would not be more remunerative than that single item of salmon, if properly worked,' remarked Hiram. 'When the fisheries of the tiny Tweed rent for fifteen thousand a-year, a hundred times that sum would not cover the value of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence. And yet they're systematically killed out, sir, by these abominable dams.'

'Why, Mr. Holt,' said Linda, looking up from her work, 'I think the mills are of more consequence than the salmon.'

'But they're not incompatible, my young lady,' he answered. 'Put steps to the dams—wooden boxes, each five feet high, for the salmon to get upstairs into the still water a-top.' Whereat Miss Linda, in her ignorance, was mightily amused at the idea of a fish ascending a staircase.

'The quantity of salmon was almost infinite twenty years ago,' said Hiram, after condescending to enlighten her on the subject of its leaping powers. 'I remember reading that Ross purchased a ton weight of it from the Esquimaux for a sixpenny knife; and one haul of his own seine net took thirty-three hundred salmon.'

George, manufacturing a sled in the corner, whistled softly, and expressed his incredulity in a low tone; not so low but that Mr. Holt's quick ears caught the doubt, and he became so overflowing with piscatory anecdotes, that Linda declared afterwards the very tea had tasted strongly of salmon on that particular evening.

'It is only a few years since Sir John Macdonald and his party killed four hundred salmon in one week, from a part of l'Esquemain River, called the Lower Pools. Thirty-five such rivers, equally full, flow through Labrador into the St. Lawrence; am I not then right in saying that this source of wealth is prodigious?' asked Mr. Holt. 'But the abominable dams, and the barrier nets, and the Indians' spearing, have already lessened it one-fourth.' A relative comparing of experiences, with reference to fishy subjects, ensued between the squire and his guest; and both agreed that—quitting the major matter of the dams—an enforcement of 'close time,' from the 20th of August till May, would materially tend to preserve the fish.

'Nature keeps them tolerably close most of that time,' remarked Arthur, 'by building a couple of yards of ice over them. From November till April they're under lock and key.'

'And han't you ever fished through holes in the ice?' asked Mr. Holt. 'Capital sport, I can tell you, with a worm for bait.'

'No; but I was going to say, how curiously thin and weak the trout are just when the ice melts. They've been on prison allowance, I presume, and are ready to devour anything.'

During all the evening, though Linda took openly a considerable share in the conversation, her mind would beat back on one question, suggested repeatedly: 'Why did Mr. Sam Holt go to Europe?' for one item of news brought by to-day's arrival was, that his eldest son had suddenly been seized with a wish to visit England, and had gone in the last boat from Halifax.

Glancing up at some remark, she encountered Mrs. Wynn's eyes, and coloured deeply. That sweetest supervision of earth, a mother's loving look, had read more deeply than the daughter imagined. Rising hurriedly, on some slight excuse, she went to the window and looked out.

'Oh, papa! such glorious northern lights!'

Ay, surely. Low arcs of dazzling light stretched from east to west across the whole breadth of the heavens; whence coruscated, in prolonged flashes, gorgeous streamers of every colour, chiefly of pale emerald green, pink, and amber.

'A rich aurora for this season of the year,' remarked Hiram Holt. 'Those that are brightly coloured generally appear in autumn or spring.'

'Oh, yes,' said George; 'do you recollect how magnificent was one we had while the fall-wheat was planting? the sky was all crimson, with yellow streamers.'

'Do you know what the Indians think about auroras?' asked Mr. Holt. 'They believe that these flashes are the spirits of the dead dancing before the throne of the Manitou, or Great Spirit.'

'No wonder they should seek for some supernatural cause of such splendour,' observed Robert.

The aurora borealis exhibited another phase of its wondrous beauty on the ensuing evening. The young people from Cedar Creek had gone to a corn-husking bee at Vernon's, an old gentleman settler, who lived some eight miles off on the concession line; and coming home in the sleighs, the whole magnificent panorama of the skies spread above them. Waves of light rolled slowly from shore to shore of the horizon in vast pulsations, noiselessly ascending to the zenith, and descending all across the stars, like tidal surges of the aerial ocean sweeping over a shallow silver strand.

Three sleighs, a short distance from each other, were running along the canal-like road, through dark walls of forest, towards the 'Corner.' Now, it is a principle in all bringings home from these midwinter bees, that families scatter as much as may be, and no sisters shall be escorted by their own brothers, but by somebody else's brothers. Consequently, Robert Wynn had paired off with Miss Armytage for this drive; and Mr. Holt, greybeard though he was, would not resign Linda to any one, but left young Armytage, Arthur, and Jay to fill the third sleigh.

Of course that sublime aurora overhead formed a main topic of conversation; but irrelevant matter worked in somehow. Blunt Hiram at last furnished a key to what had puzzled his fair companion by asking abruptly, when Captain Argent was expected at Cedar Creek?

'Captain Argent?' she repeated, in surprise; 'he's not expected at all; I believe he has gone to Ireland on a year's leave.'

'Then you are not about to be married to him?' said Mr. Holt, still more bluntly.

'No indeed, sir,' she answered, feeling very red, and thankful for the comparative gloom. Whereupon Mr. Holt shook hands with her, and expressed his conviction that she was the best and prettiest girl in the county; afterwards fell into a brown study, lasting till they got home.

The pair in the hindmost sleigh diverged equally far from the aurora; for heavy upon Edith's heart lay the fact that the mortgage was at last about to be foreclosed, and they should leave Daisy Burn. This very evening, her father coming late to Mrs. Vernon's corn-shelling bee, had told her that Zack would be propitiated no longer; he wanted to get the farm in time for spring operations, and vowed he would have it. They must all go to Montreal, where Captain Armytage had some friends, and where Edith hoped she might be able perhaps to turn her accomplishments to good account by opening a school.

'Papa is not at all suited for a settler's life,' she said. 'He has always lived in cities, and town habits are strong upon him. It is the best we can do.'

CHAPTER XLIII

A BUSH-FLITTING

Into Robert Wynn's mind, during that sleigh-drive under the northern lights, had entered one or two novel ideas. The first was a plan for frustrating the grasping storekeeper's design. He laid the whole circumstances before Mr. Holt, and asked for the means of redeeming the mortgage, by paying Captain Armytage's debt to Bunting, which was not half the value of the farm.

The gallant officer was not obliged for his friend's officiousness. He had brought himself to anticipate the move to Montreal most pleasurably, notwithstanding the great pecuniary loss to himself. The element of practicality had little place in his mental composition. An atmosphere of vagueness surrounded all his schemes, and coloured them with a seductive halo.

'You see, my dear fellow,' he said to Robert, when the proposition of redeeming the mortgage was made, 'you see, it does not suit my plans to bury myself any longer in these backwoods, eh? There are so few opportunities of relaxation—of intellectual converse, of—a—in short, of any of those refinements required by a man of education and knowledge of the world. You will understand this, my dear Mr. Robert. I—I wish for a more extended field, in fact. Nor is it common justice to the girls to keep them immured, I may say, in an atmosphere of perpetual labour. I am sure my poor dear Edith has lived a slave's life since she came to the bush. Only for your amiable family, I—I positively don't know what might have been the consequence, eh?'

Robert felt himself getting angry, and wisely withdrew. On Mr. Holt's learning the reception of his offer, he briefly remarked that he guessed Sam wouldn't object to own a farm near Cedar Creek, and he should buy it altogether from the captain, which was accordingly done. We refrain from picturing Zack's feelings.

The other idea which had visited Robert under the aurora—why should he not himself become the tenant of Daisy Burn? He took his fur cap and went down there for an answer.

The captain had gone to the 'Corner,' this being post-day, and he expected some letters from the Montreal friends in whom he believed. Reginald was chopping wood; the two sisters were over their daily lessons. What to do with Jay, while the above question was being asked and answered, was a problem tasking Robert's ingenuity, and finally he assumed the office of writing-master, set her a sum in long division, which he assured her would require the deepest abstraction of thought, and advised a withdrawal to some other room for that purpose.

Jay fell into the snare, and went, boasting of her arithmetical powers, which would bring back the sum completed in a few minutes. The instant the door closed,—

'I came down this morning,' said Robert, 'to tell you that I have concluded to take Daisy Burn as tenant to Mr. Holt, from the first of April next. That is,' he added, 'on one condition.'

'What?' she asked, a faint colour rising to her cheek, for his eyes were fixed on her.

'Arthur is much steadier than he was, since that visit to Argent last spring made him see that a penniless proud man has no business to endeavour to live among his equals in social rank, but his superiors in wealth. He is good enough farmer to manage Cedar Creek, with George's increasing help, and Dubois as a sort of steward. Edith, if I come here and settle on this farm, I cannot live alone; will you be my wife?'

He leaned forward, and took her passive hand. The conscious crimson rose for one moment to her throat and averted face, crept even to the finger-tips, then left her of the usual marble paleness again.